They're here to stay. All consoles have motion controls. The Wii was the fastest selling home console iirc but sales tailed off and it was dropped so it's never going to catch up with PS2.

Pervert.

When motion tracking is usable enough to measure where my fingers are and pick up on their smallest movements, and I have 3D projectors placing buttons in front of me, then maybe. I mean you don't eat with your elbows, your hands are more accurate

I say only maybe as well, because it's quite likely that I'll also want some tactile feedback, remember the death of rumble and outpourings of grief. Games are an abstract, it's the game makers decision to shorten or lengthen that bridge according to what he wants to elicit. Taking forms of interaction away are a bad thing

I think pad with gyros is a good compromise. One pad for each hand, ala PSMove with both being tracked, might well come next, but I don't think we'll lose buttons for a long while yet. And I don't want us to

In fact, my new telly has a pointing remote. It's like having a mouse but better.

Almost as good as touch screen but clearly more practical for a TV interface.

Brooks wrote:

I'm not just going to flap my fucking arms in the goddamn void.

It's never the same after they've had kids.

Pointy was good on the Wii but tilt was the best thing about it.

Mercury Meltdown, Kororinpa (plus it's hard to find sequel Marble Balance Challenge) and Bit Trip Beat are excellent examples of how sensitive and accurate it can be.

The control in Bit Trip Beat, based around twisting the wiimote, successfully recreates the feel of paddle controllers which is no mean feat. After that I was looking forward to a decent Arkanoid port or T2K, Kaboom or Warlords - no chance. Taito did a WiiWare version of Arkanoid but lazily ignored what Gaijun did in Bit trip and implemented d-pad control - what a wasted opportunity.

The nunchuck had tilt sensors too and was hardly used - Gottlieb pinball used both wiimote and nunchuck for nudging which was quite well done. Punch Out used the nunchuck tilt too.

I watched that right up to 'record your dreams'.

Fuck off.

Yes they are the future, alongside many other input methods that have and have not yet been conceived, but not in their current form and they'll never fully replace buttons.

Next thread, please.

Yossarian wrote:

Yes they are the future, alongside many other input methods that have and have not yet been conceived, but not in their current form and they'll never fully replace buttons. Next thread, please.

Well... How many buttons did a mobile phone have in the late 90's, and how many buttons does the average smartphone have now?

This, quite strangely, is the complete opposite to what's happened with game controllers... That, of course, was until Ninty threw a curve at mofos'... 

In fact, the tendency to add more buttons/inputs to videogame controllers goes against the general underlying concept of technology (the main goal of technology is to generally simplify shit, after all). Seriously, how have we ended up with so many fucking buttons?

Not all that long ago, we had only three (or so) buttons, tops. And funnily enough, a more diverse range of entertainment software...

Sophistication aside, of course.

dynamiteReady wrote:

In fact, the tendency to add more buttons/inputs to videogame controllers goes against the general underlying concept of technology (the main goal of technology is to generally simplify shit, after all). Seriously, how have we ended up with so many fucking buttons? Not all that long ago, we had only three (or so) buttons, tops. And funnily enough, a more diverse range of entertainment software... Sophistication aside, of course.

We added more buttons so that we could do more things in game. Sure, Sonic only needs a D-Pad and one button, but other things either simply aren't possible, or are only possible in a seriously hamstrung way if you remove available inputs. I think given the pads available today though, we've reached the maximum inputs our hands are comfortable with. It's not really changed much since 1997.

Personally I found Move to be the best of the bunch.
It just worked. You needed to be in a dimly lit room but it was more accurate than even Wii m+.

That media molecule thing was awesome and the exciting thing is i can imagne quite easily how it was made, procedural animation like that is pretty marvellous right? You can buy the technology for about 50 quid for unity hah

I think when folk get used to having gesture based control thats so accurate, intelligent and hassle free they'll consign pads to the bin forever. Intention is to have a leap motion thing built into your eyewear for the VR/AR thing in such a way that you have incredibly accurate hand and finger tracking so long as you keep your hands in the sensor's 'view' (Which could be very broad). Every rotation and flick can be measured to crazy resolution, it learns to suit you, can blur out noise from the input etc. It can use the input and weigh it against things like a gyro and accelerometer too so your entire body can contribute to the input. (EDIT: I should add, this tracking can be taken from several devices in the room and interpolated to get the most accurate possible information, devices can be your console, your tv, your phone, other peoples eyewear and phones etc etc) It will come sooner or later, probably sooner, and the whole gamepad thing will seem a total pain in the arse and we'll have a little laugh at ourselves

Informed speculation from me once again. Everytime I think i'm doing something interesting with my speculation i find out its already been done, is going to happen and in the hands of rich interested people, i dont think what ive just said would surprise me if it turns up at some kind of tech expo

Yossarian wrote:

dynamiteReady wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Yes they are the future, alongside many other input methods that have and have not yet been conceived, but not in their current form and they'll never fully replace buttons. Next thread, please.

Well... How many buttons did a mobile phone have in the late 90's, and how many buttons does the average smartphone have now? This, quite strangely, is the complete opposite to what's happened with game controllers... That, of course, was until Ninty threw a curve at mofos'...  In fact, the tendency to add more buttons/inputs to videogame controllers goes against the general underlying concept of technology (the main goal of technology is to generally simplify shit, after all). Seriously, how have we ended up with so many fucking buttons? Not all that long ago, we had only three (or so) buttons, tops. And funnily enough, a more diverse range of entertainment software... Sophistication aside, of course.

But phones don't require such precise inputs as certain types of game do.

You say that, but now mobile phone input technology is now making it's way into videogames, and it's all being billed as cutting edge... 

Top of the range mobile touch screens and gyroscopes do actually provide a wider range of input than a simple array of buttons.

Also, how many buttons does your mouse have, and how imprecise to you consider it to be?

Vela wrote:

I think Metroid Prime 3 is probably the best example if controls in a first person shooting game.

It would be a disaster not to see that improved upon with a motion+ version in MP4.

Word.

You're talking about replacing traditional control pads with touch and gyro though. In my experiance, the games that use traditional controllers haven't survived the transition to mobile very well, and the best mobile games are either conversions of mouse led games or new ideas built from the new input system.

The Vita has touch and gyro. Aside from games that come from mobile or are aping it, those features have a tendency to feel gimicky, not natural. I'm not using the tilt to aim stuff in Uncharted for example, when there are two analogue sticks, because the sticks simply do the job better.

I've never played Devil Dice. But I'm fairly confident that Uncharted would not play as well on a mobile as it does on PlayStation.